Your First HDInsight Cluster–Step by Step

Small Bites of Big Data from AZURECAT
Big Data Tech Training Series #1
Cindy Gross | Murshed Zaman

Sometimes it is just hard to get started. Have you been putting off your first foray into Hadoop? Are you not sure where to begin? Let’s get really basic.

Prerequisites:

Log on to the Windows Azure Portal https://manage.windowsazure.com

Go to storage https://manage.windowsazure.com/#Workspaces/StorageExtension/storage. Create a storage account in a location that is available to HDInsight (as of November 2013 that’s East US, West US, and North Europe). Do NOT choose an affinity group. If you choose to “Enable Geo-Replication” there will be an extra charge – it’s probably not necessary for a demo/test account as you have a limited amount of credit in the trial subscription. In the portal choose the STORAGE icon on the left. Then click on +NEW at the bottom. That opens a QUICK CREATE window. Enter a unique name for your storage, such as sqlcatwomanrules. It only allows lower case letters and numbers.

StorageNov2013 NewStorageAccountNov2013

Now click on the HDInsight icon just below the storage icon storage. Choose QUICK CREATE. Enter a unique name for your HDInsight cluster. For a demo choose 4 data nodes. Enter a password that contains upper and lower case letters, a number, and a special character. Choose the storage account you created above. Once you click on “CREATE HDINSIGHT CLUSTER” it will take several minutes for the cluster to be deployed.

StorageNov2013_HDI QuickCreateNov2013

Once it completes you are ready to use your cluster!

ClusterQuickStart

If you won’t be using the cluster right away, go ahead and delete it (look for the icon at the bottom of the portal) to save compute time and money. You can easily recreate it when you need it.

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Look for more blogs soon on customizing your cluster with CUSTOM CREATE or PowerShell and on automating deployment and jobs with PowerShell. In the meantime see if you can get Invoke-Hive working from PowerShell for some simple Hive commands such as:

Invoke-Hive "select * from hivesampletable limit 10"

Big Data Technical Series:

Your First HDInsight Cluster–Step by Step

Automating HDInsight cluster creation with PowerShell